she only wanted, she told us, to huckleberry finn her way back to san jose, california, back to the twin sister who could help restart her life. she wanted to us believe that she cares, that she would never do it again. just as she had already promised before. you know, there will be those who say, keith, you just got taken by birdie. all i can say is, i m not a con artist. people are probably going to look at me and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you re just going to say that you re not going to do it but we ll see. you saw the country. i saw the country. that was, of course, more than a dozen years ago and birdie jo did reunite with her twin sister becky in san jose, where she was again caught impersonating a boy. the two women ran from our camera rather than talk to us there. and in 2003, birdie was convicted in tulsa, oklahoma, for writing bad checks.
here. but as we said, the kind people of galena, kansas, didn t know anything about this when, eight years later, a boy named chris showed up in their church and school, clearly in need of help. galena was about to learn that things and sometimes people aren t always as they appear. would the boy turn out to be a girl? was the lonely kid really all alone? what would become of galena s faith? coming up pastor jones meets birdie jo s extended family. then i saw the sister, and then i was really confused. and birdie jo speaks on her own behalf. i m just trying not to wind up dead somewhere. d, sun life financial should be famous. we re working on it. so you re seriously proposing we change our
they could do things right. for all the things they didn t do right, they were never short on people trying to help them. i can say she doesn t like being in trouble. i ll put it that way. eddie battitori represented birdie jo during her first case in galena. i found her very endearing, very charming and very likable. there was also what i thought a little bit of a sadness to her. i couldn t put my finger on it. he decided to take the second case for free. she really needed help. she seemed pretty alarmed about the situation and the accusation, so i just told her i d help her out. michael goodrich, the same county attorney who had dismissed previous charges against birdie jo and her sister moved forward with new charges of burglary and theft and criminal damage to property. birdie jo and becky each pleaded not guilty, denying any involvement in the crime. battitori was able to buy them
hard-bitten reporters who with tears in their eyes breathlessly told the story in salt lake. everybody got suckered, up and down the line. reporter: chip got a front-page byline for breaking the story in the deseret news. looking back on it we probably all said to ourselves, we should have known. it was too good to be true. all those letters, all those lies. birdie jo had done more than bruised some egos. birdie jo had done real damage. judge oddone, angry now, got ready for an already cynical public to turn its back on needy, itinerant children. people were calling from all over the united states and offering to take this child home for christmas and make christmas for him. and what this did was this slammed the door on all that charity and all that kindness. birdie jo spent 30 days in jail in salt lake for forgery and making false statements and then was released to this homeless shelter. she was ordered by the court to complete a life skills course. life skills? birdie
chased all over the community of joplin, missouri, to try to find me with a gallon of ice cream just to give me a gift. by the time they found me, it was melted. you felt sorry for them, you felt compassion towards them. you felt like, this is somebody that we can help. there was this glimmer of hope that you would always find in them. but for every step they took forward something always seemed to set them back again. i don t know i can say i understand anything that motivates these two girls, other than to say that they have a keen eye for opportunity. in 2005, birdie jo was reprimanded by joplin police for calling the station and making a false report. incredibly, she was at it again, pretending to be a teenage boy who d just been molested by his father and who just couldn t take it anymore. she was advised by police to stop or she d face criminal charges. they have a real issue with deception.